Three Iden­ti­cal Strangers

When Robert ​“Bob­by” Shafran arrived for his first day at Upstate New York’s Sul­li­van Coun­ty Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in 1980, the 19-year-old fresh­man received a touchy-feely greet­ing from near­ly every stu­dent he encoun­tered. The only prob­lem was that he had nev­er actu­al­ly met any of the peo­ple who wel­comed him like their home­com­ing king. It was only when some­one called him by the name ​“Eddy” that Shafran realised he must be embroiled in a severe­ly strange iden­ti­ty mix-up; as it turns out, he didn’t know the half of it.

Shafran was approached that same day by Michael Dom­nitz, a sopho­more who had attend­ed col­lege the pre­vi­ous year with a man named Eddy Gal­land and was star­tled by Shafran’s indis­tin­guish­able resem­blance to his for­mer class­mate. Dom­nitz and Shafran made the mul­ti-hour trek from their cam­pus to the sub­urbs of Long Island, where Gal­land was resid­ing with his fam­i­ly. When Shafran final­ly came face to face with his alleged dop­pel­gänger, he couldn’t believe what he saw: not sim­ply a looka­like, but a per­son com­plete­ly iden­ti­cal in both face and physique.

Tim Wardle’s new doc­u­men­tary begins with this rare and for­tu­itous dis­cov­ery, which would quick­ly ignite a nation­al com­mo­tion: two men, Shafran and Gal­land, realise that they are iden­ti­cal sib­lings, only to then learn that they have a third, equal­ly iden­ti­cal broth­er, David Kell­man, who, like them, had been sep­a­rat­ed at birth and adopt­ed by a Long Island fam­i­ly. The gre­gar­i­ous triplets became instant celebri­ties and press fix­tures, prone to par­ty­ing their way through Man­hat­tan when they weren’t chat­ting with news­men and talk show hosts. In 1984, a ris­ing star named Madon­na recog­nised the trio on the street and threw them into her new movie, Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan, on the spot.

It’s easy to envi­sion a ver­sion of Three Iden­ti­cal Strangers that more or less func­tions as a nos­tal­gic, name-drop­ping recap of the broth­ers’ brief flir­ta­tion with fame, but War­dle has instead cre­at­ed a humane por­trait of three unusu­al media sen­sa­tions. War­dle has lit­tle inter­est in dis­tin­guish­ing his film through crafts­man­ship, rely­ing a bit too heav­i­ly on visu­al and archival inserts of front pages, morn­ing shows, and home movies, as well as Errol Mor­ris-aping recre­ations of cer­tain key events, to lev­el out the poten­tial chop­pi­ness of the expo­si­tion and com­men­tary espoused in the sub­jects’ to-cam­era testimonies.

But War­dle proves him­self a prob­ing yet sen­si­tive explor­er, which is a role far more fit­ting for this par­tic­u­lar project. War­dle nev­er shies away from the tougher con­se­quences pre­cip­i­tat­ed by this fra­ter­nal reunion, like the anger of the trio’s adop­tive par­ents, who were nev­er made aware of these bio­log­i­cal sib­lings. But War­dle also leaps head-first into the dark­ness that threat­ened to con­sume the broth­ers’ adult lives as each dealt, on and off, with men­tal ill­ness and psy­chi­atric care. The direc­tor keeps broad­en­ing his film’s scope with momen­tous devel­op­ments that are entire­ly impos­si­ble to pre­dict and make for some of the most shock­ing reveals seen in doc­u­men­tary cin­e­ma this year.

It wasn’t until the 1990s, when renowned New York­er jour­nal­ist Lawrence Wright came across a jaw-drop­ping rev­e­la­tion while research­ing his 1997 study ​‘Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are’, that the stark truth behind the broth­ers’ sep­a­ra­tion came ful­ly into focus. Like many of the film’s twists, Wright’s dis­cov­ery is worth pre­serv­ing, but suf­fice it to say that the seem­ing care­less­ness of the adop­tion agency that gave the boys away turns out to be some­thing far cru­el­er and more devi­ous­ly delib­er­ate than pos­si­bly imaginable.

When this bomb­shell was dropped into their laps, the broth­ers strug­gled to cope. In these mid-to-lat­er pas­sages, War­dle breaks with his house style here and there for the sake of the film’s inves­tiga­tive pur­pos­es. What fol­lows is a grip­ping search for answers that con­sumes us com­plete­ly; after a while, the slap­dash laps­es in the film­mak­ing actu­al­ly start to evince an inad­ver­tent sense of urgency.

Besides, it isn’t the style one leaves Three Iden­ti­cal Strangers think­ing about, but rather its fun­da­men­tal sor­row. Wardle’s film achieves its melan­cholic poignan­cy ear­ly on, when Shafran recalls the first time he laid eyes on Gal­land, the first of two long-lost broth­ers he nev­er knew were miss­ing: ​“It was like the world fad­ed away… and it was just me and Eddy.” War­dle man­ages to repro­duce this pathos again and again, whether he’s talk­ing to the broth­ers’ wives, women who speak of their love for these men with a spark as fresh as it was on the day they met, or Gal­land and Kell­man them­selves, two sur­vivors who car­ry the DNA, the his­to­ry, the pain, and the heart of a broth­er who was nev­er meant to be theirs.